Indian Pioner Papers -J.W. Honeysuckle

Submitted by Brenda Choate  bcchoate@yahoo.com

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J.W. Honeysuckle



Interview #9502

Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson

Date: December 24, 1937

Name:   Mr. J.W. Honeysuckle

Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma

Date of Birth: October 2, 1888

Place of Birth:  Texas

Father:  E.H. Honeysuckle, born in Arkansas

Mother: Molly Blount, born in Arkansas  



 

I was born in 1886, in Texas.  I came to the Indian Territory 

with my father and mother in 1897.  We came from Arkansas in a 

wagon and settled on a small farm near a place called Cumberland 

in the Chickasaw Nation.



There were no free schools then.  We lived about five miles 

from Cumberland and there was a subscription school there, 

the only one in that part of the country, and it cost $1.50 a 

month for each pupil and school only held about three months a year.



My father raised about twenty bales of cotton the first year.  

That was lots of cotton for him to raise in one crop as we had been 

farming back in Arkansas and if we raised five bales we thought that 

was good.



There was not much farming done at that time around Cumberland but the 

prairies were spotted with cattle, grazing.



My father hauled his cotton to Sherman, Texas, after it was ginned at 

Cumberland.



There was no railroad there but Cumberland was a good sized town 

with a population of about two hundred people.  It was the largest 

town we passed after we crossed into the Indian Territory.  We passed 

through several small places on the trip from Arkansas across to 

Cumberland, that is they were small places them, by now they are large towns.



We were three weeks on the road from Arkansas to Cumberland and we had 

deer meat for every meal.  It was no trouble to get a turkey any time 

you wanted one.  We passed flock after flock of turkeys going in large 

bunches like cattle.  There were no roads to speak of but in some places 

we would hit an old wagon road and follow it several miles and when we 

came to the end of it, it would be at a place where some sawmill workers 

had been hauling timber out.



In several places we had to work half a day making a place so we could 

get across a creek.



We passed very few houses on this trip and most of the houses that we 

did see were one and two roomed log houses.  Now and then we would pass 

a large ranch house.



We were stopped before we reached Cumberland and my father had to 

pay $5.00 for a permit.  The man who wrote the permit made it out 

for the Choctaw Nation and after we were settled at Cumberland in 

the Chickasaw Nation, another man tried to make Father pay another 

$5.00 to live in the Chickasaw Nation but Father would not pay it 

and the agent or the man who was trying to collect it told Father 

that he would have to report to the Chickasaw Indian Court at 

Tishomingo, but Father never did report and the permit he paid 

before we reached Cumberland was the only one he ever did pay.



Christmas times then were different.  Then, if we kids got some candy 

and an apple or an orange, we thought it was a swell Christmas.  We 

would make our own sleds, and then there was always plenty of snow and 

for fire works all we would have would sometimes be a tin of black 

powder and we would make our own fire crackers by taking limbs of 

elder bush and punching out the pith and filling them with black powder.  

We would use twine strings for the fuses.



Usually Dad or one of the older boys would fix them and set them off and 

the smaller children would sit back and watch.



We farmed and raised stock and while we were never rich we always had 

enough clothes and plenty to eat.



During Territory days we lived on the farm near Cumberland.

I now live at Pauls Valley.